It is the mission of Dobber Sports to provide the readers with the most current and reliable information and opinion to best set them up to win their fantasy leagues as often as possible. Second place is just the first-place loser.

How it all started

It started with an email in 2002. Darryl Dobbs was at the end of his rope. Even with a Degree in Statistics and a Minor in Mathematics, and despite 13 years in a fantasy hockey keeper league and despite putting together preseason projections every year since 1991 that were generally more accurate than in the magazines…Dobbs was still not in the hockey business. Not for lack of trying. He applied to The Hockey News (twice), and had reached out to other hockey publications, but the amount of hockey media jobs out there was limited. But in 2002, a "last ditch" effort finally worked. Dobbs had fired off emails to every sports department he could find online. One person wrote back: Al Strachan. He suggested that Dobbs take his inquiry to The Hockey News, it would be a good fit there.

That was the window that Dobbs needed. Yes, he had already tried with THN. A few times. But now he has something that can grab their attention. So he forwarded the email to Jason Kay, managing editor of The Hockey News and used the subject line "Al Strachan read this, you can too!". Using the name drop, it got Kay's attention and Kay reached out. Dobbs was given a weekly column on THN.com. That was quickly turned into twic

e weekly, plus a bi-weekly mailbag and a monthly Top 300 Player Rankings (for keeper leagues). To this very day you can still find those Top 300 Rankings every month.

DobberHockey's launch

The 2004-05 NHL season was wiped out thanks to the lockout. Unfortunately, this resulted in layoffs across the industry. Among the layoffs was the webmaster at THN. Dobbs, not wanting to lose that precious gig, had continued writing fantasy hockey articles every week, not missing one. During a lockout! He'd focus on the AHL and other leagues, any players with fantasy relevance still playing hockey somewhere. When the webmaster was laid off, Dobber had to submit his articles to one of The Hockey News columnists (Adam Proteau). When the lockout ended, Dobbs immediately put together the Top 300 Rankings. The problem was, the columnist/interim web guy didn't know how to post them. He was a columnist, so he could post articles but wasn't shown how to post spreadsheets. So the solution Dobbs came up with was to use the free webpage that his Internet Provider gave him, and post the rankings there. Then he would link to that page at the end of each article. This led to readers going to the web page in surprising numbers. Dobbs then added his own thoughts on fantasy hockey and called them his "Ramblings". Readers flocked to the page. So Dobbs decided to buy a domain and make the site a little more real. The obvious domain names were already taken so he decided to incorporate his nickname and go with DobberHockey.com. And so it began.

Quick growth

DobberHockey grew quickly, with Dobber selling a Playoff Draft List in 2006, followed by the Fantasy Guide that September and the Midseason Guide in January of 2007. That summer he added the Fantasy Prospects Report to provide a rundown of all prospects from a fantasy standpoint. In the spring he launched DobberBaseball.com and he also launched the fantasy hockey forum. Sales and website growth were so strong that Dobber and his wife decided that he should try it full time and give it six months. In November of 2007 he quit his office job. He's never looked back.

In late 2008, Jason Arbuthnot's Frozen Pool became a part of DobberHockey. And so DobberHockey became the first website to put together and present actual real-time line combinations from NHL games, as well as make other reporting tools available for fantasy owners.

In 2011, Dobber acquired the rights to Goalie Post, a website that launched in 2007 as a destination that provides starting goalie information.

In January of 2012, DobberProspects was launched. A website that provided hockey prospect information from a fantasy standpoint was needed, and Dobber filled that need by putting together a great staff of full coverage by team.

In the summer of 2012, David Cushard reached out to Dobber about launching a football component. Cushard is a national fantasy football champion and annually plays for big stakes in Las Vegas. DobberFootball launched.

About the Founder

Darryl "Dobber" Dobbs resides in Pickering, Ontario with his wife and two young daughters. His work in the fantasy hockey industry is extensive, including:

– Launched DobberHockey in 2005, DobberProspects in 2012, took over GoaliePost in 2011 (GoaliePost launched in 2008), and took over Fantasy Hockey Geek in 2017

– Freelanced for The Hockey News with over 900 online columns, over two dozen magazine columns (including the annual Ultimate Pool Guide). (2002-2014)